Foreword
“Art is not just about decorating the world, but about taking responsibility…” ~ Olafur Eliasson
Indeed, artists in history have inspired many, leading to changes in people’s perceptions and culture. Facing the global issue of sustainability, we artists can also take a leading role in shaping our current world towards a sustainable orientation.
Being in harmony with Nature is a key value in Chinese art and culture. It is also the core of the United Nation’s avowed worldview. Artists Co-op has established the SUSTAINABILITY ART HUB to help unleash, consolidate and develop the artistic and creative capacity of Hong Kong for sustainable development in the territory, the region and the world.
Financially supported by the Arts Capacity Development Funding Scheme of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the SUSTAINABILITY ART HUB has rolled out an Artists-in-Residence, Sustainability Art Mentorship Scheme, Open Call for Sustainability Art Projects and a series of art education and community programmes. The fruitful results and creative process are shared with all in this Sustainability Art Exhibition and other platforms.
During the two-month exhibition period of the Sustainability Art Exhibition, in addition to the display of large-scale sustainability art sculptures and installations by 8 renowned local and overseas artists, the works of four artists and art group of the younger generation recruited through the Open Call are also featured. The media and approaches covered range from sculpture, installation, multi-media, interactive, community participatory, environmental, music, puppetry and physical theatre, etc.
The content of this programme does not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Artist Statement
Artists-in-Residence
Open Call Awardees
Celia KO Tin Yan
Title: A Preserved Narrative
Year: 2021
Medium: Photograph, oil painting images, historical images, computer graphics, Printed Images on mesh banners
As Shatin had played a role in my childhood, I created this piece to honour the memory I share with my parents for remembering my grandparents that had long passed away.
In my memory, Shatin is an endearing place, combined with experiences of a time, a space of events with emotions. It is also of my family stories told in a verbal language style that reflects the described epoch of different generations. This Shatin continues to exist through the accounts of personal stories. However, as time passes and the immense social changes are inevitable, memory is fragile and easy to be forgotten. The effort of preserving memory could eventually be futile.
Constructed as an outdoor installation, “A Preserved Narrative” is a part of my decades-long visual investigation of my family stories. It juxtaposes with images of my painting, photography and graphics, trying to re-imagine the Shatin in my memory with glimpses of sunlight under the wrapped-up skies, which is a place that is still existing but already long lost.
Cornelia ERDMANN
Title: Den for Reflection
Year: 2021
Medium: bamboo (reclaimed, new), nuts & bolts, metal wire
The bamboo structure is a participatory, public artwork and a light installation. Originating in the concept of place-making and sustainability the artwork Den for Reflection articulates an organic dynamic in its material as well as in its making process. It manifests the natural and the man-made; it connects people with a place; it expands between people and between people and place. Made from sustainable bamboo with the help of my group of mentees, the artwork grew organically over time from small entities that were connected into larger structures. The bamboo rings form a fabric-like texture that become a large-scale installation that is suspended on the site of Sha Lek Corner between the existing containers forming a canopy. With sunlight as well as with spotlights at night, the artwork casts shadow patterns of circles onto the ground below expanding its reach, offering a den for reflection.
Dio WONG Wai Lun
Title: Memory of Friends, Gathering from Zero
Year: 2021
Medium: Recycle paper sculpture
"One as whole, whole is one" starting from the Maya civilisation, which is not far away from the present but an ancient civilization. My teammates used the touch of different animals to represent them through a game, and then to realise the environmental and ecological deterioration caused by human civilisation today.
The Mayan Feathered Serpent, an entity of modern technological civilization, records the stories of the animals chosen, as well as the history of human civilization, the high-level development of science and technology and the process of material’s overage. Where will the human spirit and soul go after material evolution?
Assistants: Sky and Tiger
Teammates: Rick CHAN Chak Fai ; CHUI Ka Ho ; Jane HUNG Sau Lai ; LAM Tsz Fai ; Olivia LI Siu Yin ; Harina
TANG Suk Ching ; Kent YIM
Eric NIEBUHR
Title: Ebb and Flow
Year: 2021
Medium: Acrylic and Water-based paint on metal attached to shipping container
Ebb and Flow references the literal definition of tides draining away from the shore and then rising again, as well as the figurative idea of things being in flux. Color comes from the bright yellow of creeping daisies found in abundance in the area with the color of water on an ideal day from the nearby Shing Mun River. The piece visually connects the viewer to the site’s former history as a tide cove (Sha Tin Hoi) before land reclamation, with the site’s current use as a community arts program working with the concept of sustainable or regenerative systems.
The artist wishes to thank community volunteers and mentees for their contribution in bringing this piece to fruition.
Artworks created through the Sustainability Art Mentorship Scheme, by YUNG Tak Cheung (TC), Rachel TANG Suk Yee and CHENG Wei are integrated into three plates in the southwest corner.
Evelyna LIANG Yee Woo
Title: “We - One bamboo one world”
Year: 2021
Medium: A multi-medium art installation, Sound / Performance / Visual Art
“WE” A group of people, accidentally meet up at Sha Lek Corner, inspired by nature… together they search for leisure, using Art, and Imagination ...
They create a space together, they build and construct…
a space to breathe and relax !
Title: “Safe haven under the flyover”
In the midst of the city’s busy noise … searching for the breathing space
The breeze, bird’s chirping , insect’s crawl…
One leaf , One bamboo
Wabi quietness
Here
At present
Sound and Bamboo Music Installation Artist: Yuki YIP, Benjamin HAO
Sakuhachi Performer: Ocean CHAN
Margaret YEUNG Kwok Fan
Title: Dialogue between the Present and the Past
Year: 2021
Medium: waste copper wire, dead trunk and waste wood
By recycling copper wire and waste wood, the ancient and modern landscapes are juxtaposed in three dimensions, reinterpreting the artistic conception of literati paintings. The three highlights are: copper wire creates brush and ink; the color of copper wire changes with oxygen, carbon dioxide and humidity; mobile phone flashlights interact with light and shade.
Moreover, making use of natural resources connects the past, present, and future, and expresses the concept of sustainability. Emphasis on creating with an attitude that does not consume the earth, not only turns waste into eternal art, and inherits Chinese landscape aesthetics, but also, we can live in harmony with nature.
Tony NG Kwun Lun
Title: Chance
Year: 2021
Medium: Wood, Stone, Sand, Hardware Parts
The concept of my work stems from the past development and present environment in the community of Sha Tin Wai, attempting to portray common concepts of everlasting and sustainable development by using various recycled elements, in order to allow perceivers to have a deep thought of the conflicts between nature and artificial environment nowadays.
Kata SANGKHAE
Title: Sound of everyday life, if tomorrow always comes
Year: 2021
Medium: bamboo, sound, found objects
“Sound of everyday life, if tomorrow always comes” is a remotely created site-specific art installation, which connects the concept of sustainable development with artistic practice. During the global Covid-19 period, this art project contributed to local and creative networks between Hong Kong, Thailand, and Australia. Social and national distances have become another platform for discovering sustainability and creativity through artistic objects, sounds, and multidisciplinary practices.
The atmospheric sound installation artwork made of bamboo and plastic cones allows people to participate and experiment with their mobile phones. As a collective sound instrument, this interactive installation becomes an artistic speaker. It provides everyone with the opportunity to create and share their voices and music. During and after Covid-19, people from different countries, races and cultural backgrounds can connect through this sound art project, creating a spirit of mutual assistance and collaboration that transcends national boundaries.
Created by: Kata Sangkhae
Co-curated by: Miss Elephant & Wilson Yeung
Benjamin HAO Lap Yan
Title: Sha Lek Corner Foraging Recipe
Year: 2021
Medium: watercolor on paper, scavenged materials
We have always been imagining and putting all our effort into shaping the future in the way we want, yet the world and nature seem to lose balance. What if the future is fallen and ‘technologically degenerate’? And it stimulates me to think about how to survive without relying on our present food production system and how to live with mother earth like our ancestors did.
In this work, I am going to continue my research on edible weeds in the Sha Lek Corner, a place which was a fishpond, then waste land under the bridge and turn it into a green community place. With the foraging toolkit which I made from scavenged materials together with my weed drawing receipts and workshops with participants, we create edible weed receipts for this place. It is a way to re-imagine how our diet and eating habits can become, and to reconsider our everyday life; knowledge; behavior; and the connection between the past, present and future.
Inkgo LAM Ka-yu
Title: The sound through 19 eardrums
Year: 2021
Medium: Bamboo Sculpture
Sounds hit the eardrum and the vibrations send to the middle ear, until the nervous system. The work shows Inkgo's imagination of bamboo, imagining bamboo as ears, and the thin film between each bamboo joint is like a human eardrum. It is interesting to think about how the sound becomes after going through 19 eardrums?
This work is also an extension of Inkgo's series of artworks "Between Meat and Bamboo", which explores the connection between plants and humans.
Shanghai Street Worker Puppet Theatre
Title: Living things are leaving
Year: 2021
Medium: Puppet Show
This is a puppet show for children. Produced and performed by Shanghai Street Worker Puppet Theatre, it aims to deliver the message of conservation, environmental protection and upcycling to arouse the interest of the audience, and enable them to rethink that waste is still valuable. They also make use of living things as objects, as well as waste, to produce puppets with creativity, responding to the theme of sustainability. The performance in the form of puppets lasts for about 20 minutes, introducing the habits and diversity of different animals. The puppets and scenes are upcycled from waste.
Director: Michael WONG
Editor and Puppeteer: Crystal MAK, Cindy KWOK, Emily姐姐(野白), Michael WONG
Puppet Maker: Tamama CHEUNG, 蛙兒
Administration: 翁芷翹
Michael WONG Ting Pong
Title: We start “Re - start”
Year: 2021
Medium: Performance
Modern mime and juggling are performing arts in which the human body is the medium. Both human and nature circulate endlessly and interact with each other. This artwork attempts to explore the relationship between the objects of nature and the performance of the human body, from the outside to the inside to the outside then the inside... Tree, stone and leaf are the materials for this performance. These natural objects are used and combined with the creation of the performers, which is presented in modern mime and juggling.
Production Staff:
Creater / Director: Michael WONG
Juggling Director: Saffron LEUNG
Acting Director: 胡秀慧
Performer: 梁兆齡, 胡秀慧, 羅樂聰, 麥瑞顯, Michael WONG
Sound Design: 展晴
© 2023 by Artists Cooperation Limited